From Adelaide Advertiser
Reported by Michelangelo Rucci
Full Story Click Here
TIMES change — even SA-Victoria football relations have remarkably mellowed.
It is 31 years (almost to the day) since Kevin Sheedy strained SANFL-VFL diplomacy by playing four — rather than three — interchange players in the Australian Championship state game against Neil Balme’s SA team at Football Park.
On Sunday, the SANFL will host the VFL in the first State game played between the leagues on the redeveloped Adelaide Oval — and the home team has given up its significant points of difference.
There will be 50m penalties, as in the AFL and VFL rule book — rather than the SANFL’s 25m rule. The cutaways to the SA coach’s box to monitor Graham Cornes’ reaction to these penalties will be priceless.
There will be the AFL’s interpretation of the “deliberate out-of-bounds” rules — rather than the SANFL’s “last-disposal” penalty for kicks and handpasses that fall out of play.
And there will be no cap on interchange rotations — not the 90 enforced in the AFL nor the 60 imposed in the SANFL. There is no cap on rotations in the VFL State league
The Victorians will feel at home at Adelaide Oval on Sunday — just as Sheedy did on May 14, 1985 at Football Park when the “Big V”, with an extra man, won by 57 points and then had the win stripped by the now-defunct National Football League.
Which is more staggering — that the SANFL has no “home-ground” rules as would apply in baseball ... or that Australian football has more than one law book while trying to claim it is a national sport?
The other contradiction is how the SANFL maintained its “independent” image by introducing the 25m rule, a differing cap on interchange rotations and the boundary penalty — and then cast aside these differing points for a State game on its home deck.
Strange ... as it is bewildering that Australian football would have differing ways to control its game from state to state. Those who argue the game needs an experimental field to test rule changes may concede the trial of rules is best kept to a junior competition, such as the under-18s, rather than senior football.
If the decision to play to “Victorian Rules” in an SANFL-hosted State game at the Oval is not enough to raise eyebrows, the more concerning point is how many SANFL players have passed up the opportunity to wear the famed red SA state jumper on Sunday.
State-of-Origin collapsed under the pressure of clubs — and then players — putting the chase for the AFL premiership before the honour of representing a state.
Now SANFL players — and clubs — are thinking the same way, preferring to rest this weekend to enhance their campaigns for the State league premiership rather than take up the privilege of representing SA.
Ultimately, such disregard from the players for the SA jumper will have state games tumble into football history in the same way as Origin games did ... regardless of whether AFL, SANFL or VFL rules are favoured.
